Star Wars: The Old Republic is a massively-multiplayer role-playing game set 300 years after the events of BioWare's Knights of the Old Republic series, but still approximately 3,600 years before the events of the films.

Continued Shakeups on The Old Republic Team

I had a lot of fun with the game. I feel as strongly about the adventure of Major Catherine Huxley as I did Commander Shepard, or Rebekah Hawke, or Elissa Cousland. I gallavanted across the galaxy, I defeated the cunning General Rakton, I turned the tide of war in Corellia and I main tanked Grand Moff Kilran and Darth Malgus, the False Emperor. I even did a tiny bit of raiding for the first time in any MMO.

The idea that liking a video game means you're going to play it for years and years is bananas to me. I loved Dead Space 2, but I didn't keep playing it for 8 months.

Of course, Patrick must be happier than a pig in shit. Whenever an MMO is being made he's always there to shit all over it. Stop Having Fun, Guys. That goes for the trolls in here too. It matters what other people play on their own time.

Sad man, just sad. I really enjoyed this game but after I maxed one character I just didn't feel compelled to play anymore, especially for $15 a month. Hopefully they'll go free-to-play and the membership numbers will surge back up a bit and remain steady. I'd probably jump back in now and again if it was free.

People will defend EA until their blue in the face, that doesn't change the fact that is a terrible Wal-mart of a company that couldn't give a penny what you think of them or their terrible business strategies.

Everything I have said since the very beginning of this stupid MMO endeavor of EA's from the moment it was announced. I wish that companies would just give us the RPG experience instead of destroying it like this. Worst part of all is that instead of giving us a world of choice, all the decisions are made -- our past experiences mean nothing to the game, everyone who we were interested in is dead, and if we want to learn what happened, we have to join an MMO that will inevitably crumble.

Maybe if they stopped putting out shitty video games EA wouldn't be in such a rough spot. Also TOR was awful. My friend and I played it to level 15 in the free to play thing and holy shit was it basic and full of MMO stereotypes. I don't understand how anyone thought it was good at all. Most of it was grinding and fetch quests, and the dialogue that was there was all indicative of singleplayer- IE, "/I/ will handle this, sir." "/I/ can stop him." "/I/ am the only one who can do this." Where was the WE the entire game? Not to mention Jedi Knight was portrayed as the main character regardless of what class you chose.

Terrible Star Wars game, terrible MMO, terrible Bioware game.

I'm no TOR apologist or defense force member but can't help but point out that much of what you said is wrong.

You obviously haven't played it then with a Jedi Knight in your party. They're always center screen and if you play trooper you get all the dumb grunt lines. It was pathetic. Why didn't they just give us KOTOR 3 with coop? They're literally making us pay 15 dollars a month just to see hundreds of other people running around doing the same tasks and missions we are and calling themselves the saviors of the republic.

My question is why do people think that's good? A coop KOTOR 3 game with a multiplayer versus mode where you can use your singleplayer character could've done the same thing as TOR, without the monthly fee and on consoles too for people who like that. What does TOR bring to the table that a coop KOTOR 3 doesn't? Absolutely nothing.

Not to mention I'm pretty sure the max group size is 4 players. Where is the MMO in that? I guess I'm the only one who sees the stupidity in this game.

I have played both as a Jedi Knight and with a Jedi Knight in my party while not being one. The "front and center" character is chosen based on who starts the conversation with the NPC. Trooper has the dumb grunt lines because that's the characterization and storyline they gave the trooper (and really, Jedi Consular has much worse lines). I'm not going to reply to the rest of your post because all it is is you being bitter that they made an MMO instead of another KOTOR. If you feel that way, that's fine, but you're not doing yourself any favors by bashing the game form an uninformed position.

I was just about to reply and say the same thing. It's whoever started the conversation that is front and center in the scene. I applaud your responses ajamafalous they're so even handed and intelligent which is a rare pleasure in any forums/comments these days.

I had a lot of fun with the game. I feel as strongly about the adventure of Major Catherine Huxley as I did Commander Shepard, or Rebekah Hawke, or Elissa Cousland. I gallavanted across the galaxy, I defeated the cunning General Rakton, I turned the tide of war in Corellia and I main tanked Grand Moff Kilran and Darth Malgus, the False Emperor. I even did a tiny bit of raiding for the first time in any MMO. The idea that liking a video game means you're going to play it for years and years is bananas to me. I loved Dead Space 2, but I didn't keep playing it for 8 months. Of course, Patrick must be happier than a pig in shit. Whenever an MMO is being made he's always there to shit all over it. Stop Having Fun, Guys. That goes for the trolls in here too. It matters what other people play on their own time.

Sure, but different genres have different expectations. MMORPGs are known time sinks. I doubt anyone goes into a single player game like Dead Space 2 expecting to be entertained for months. It's a silly comparison. It's an MMORPG that you're paying a monthly fee for, it's natural that you'd want some longevity to justify the cost.

@HumanoidTyphoon: Absolutely, if I had been paying for it the last 6 months. I got my free month and paid for an additional one. Was well worth it. Tons of fun, saved my January. And then Amalur and Syndicate came out and I played those.

The issue isn't that SWTOR has quests that seem like time sinks but that they seem built with an old design. Both Guild Wars 2 and WoW still have these "Kill X things" but they definitely present them in ways that aren't so wrote. Part of this is due to GW2 and WoW being more "recent" but especially with WoW Cata they were already trying to avoid these which resulted in the sensation that if you left WoW to play SWTOR it was like traveling back in time.

The issue isn't that SWTOR has quests that seem like time sinks but that they seem built with an old design. Both Guild Wars 2 and WoW still have these "Kill X things" but they definitely present them in ways that aren't so wrote. Part of this is due to GW2 and WoW being more "recent" but especially with WoW Cata they were already trying to avoid these which resulted in the sensation that if you left WoW to play SWTOR it was like traveling back in time.

Guild Wars doesn't have any quests that are simply "kill X things" unless you're simply defending an area from an attack, in which case you're just having to clear out the area, you never specifically have to kill a certain amount of dudes before you're allowed to move on. A random quest that asks you to kill bandits or whatever always has alternative objectives to complete as well, so you can break things up if you don't want to do nothing but combat or you can avoid it altogether. There's definitely an element of just masking some of the tedium, but I think they've eliminated the problem for the most part. It doesn't just feel like a huge grind in the way that TOR does.

I get the feeling that these shake-ups are just further proof that they're moving towards a F2P model, which I think will be good for the game. A lot of the early design decisions for the game were just plain bad, in my opinion, but if they allow me to play through the character stories for free, I'll at least come back and give the game another shot.

Regardless of how well an MMO is doing (I am still surprised that the internet cares so much about the financial affairs of SWTOR, I kinda get the feeling that theres a general want around the internet for the game to fail...)

This time I think EA is right, it just doesn't take as much staff to produce content for an MMO as it does to produce the game to begin with.

Regardless of how well an MMO is doing (I am still surprised that the internet cares so much about the financial affairs of SWTOR, I kinda get the feeling that theres a general want around the internet for the game to fail...)

This time I think EA is right, it just doesn't take as much staff to produce content for an MMO as it does to produce the game to begin with.

People that play MMOs get highly invested in them, nobody wants to get attached to something that could fall apart so these players pay particular attention to the health of the game and those that run it.

And when an MMO for a popular license goes bad, people just want it to go away so the next game can be made.

I don't know how long TOR was in development but it was fully staffed development wise since 2008; it took them at least 3 years to create what little content the game has now, do you think the current playerbase is going to wait 3 years for more content? If anything they should be hiring more people if the game was healthly, not laying people off.